Dr. Sunandana Chandra is an Assistant Professor in Medicine in the Division of Hematology Oncology at Northwestern University. As a Medical Oncologist and clinical researcher, she collaborates with basic and translational scientists to try to increase the current armamentarium of novel therapeutics in the setting of clinical trials for high risk and advanced melanoma and non-melanoma skin cancer patients. She is the Co-Lead of the Northwestern Medicine Skin Disease Team, and the Principal Investigator for numerous trials numerous trials in advanced melanoma and non-melanoma cutaneous malignancies in early phase developmental therapeutic trials, as well as later phase trials.
Her areas of expertise includes melanoma, melanoma brain metastases, management of immune mediated toxicities, and non-melanoma advanced cutaneous malignancies such as Merkel cell carcinoma, cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma, and basal cell carcinoma.
She is on the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Faculty, member of the ASCO Scientific Committee, was a Co-Chair of the Developmental Therapeutics Molecular Targeted Agents and Tumor Biology Track in 2020, and on the Melanoma Track in 2021. She is also on the Society of Immunetherapy of Cancer (SITC) panel for Non-Melanoma Skin Cancer Immunotherapy Guideline Expert Panel. In addition, Dr. Chandra is involved in collaborations in which she is trying to identify predictive and prognostic biomarkers in the development and management of immune mediated toxicities. She is a Co-Investigator in the Northwestern Immunotoxicity Biospecimen Registry which allows for the serial acquisition (pre-treatment, on treatment, and time of toxicity) of clinical specimens of patients being treated with immunotherapy, whether from peripheral blood and/or tumor tissue, including the tumor microenvironment.